


and i can unscrew the stars

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 19:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>M'gann does better on the grass than the sand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i can unscrew the stars

M’gann has never felt so real as she does on the day that she first sets her feet on the grassy surface of Earth.

Uncle J’onn lands his ship in a forest somewhere, and it is July; the smell of bay laurels permeates the air and the leaves on the trees flash in the sunshine like coins. M’gann breathes it all in, through the soft and fleshy nostrils she’d made for herself, opens her pink mouth and wonders if she can gulp down this moment, swallow it into her feeble little heart and keep it there.

She had never seen a sky so blue. She had never known the sensation of sunlight on her skin, after having been forced to stay in the darkness and the cold because of her white and bony form. She was not an atrocity anymore. She was not inferior or appalling or horrendous. She was herself, finally, fingers to toes, just like Megan – she could laugh, and she could smile, and she could count the freckles on her face and maybe she would find a Conner one day, and the color would brighten, and it would never, ever get cancelled, because happiness is never cancelled.

She tones her mind to the shape that the planet demands, and she breathes in and out through her temples, meditates, ponders, thinks of all the little gold strings of memories that snake like spider webs through her mind. And each day, Uncle J’onn reminds her that he is proud of her – he is proud of her for breaking away from that sandy red surface that they both know so well; he is proud of her for learning and for understanding; he is proud of her for the good she does, the lives she saves.

She meets the Team, and their thoughts lace themselves into her consciousness in all colors and sights – Wally, a fizzling streak of sun-drenched lemon; Robin, bright and keen and blue, always giggling, always ticking; Kaldur, a deep and calm teal, swirling indolently in the corners; Artemis, biting and evergreen, like woodlands in the snow.

Rocket is a sparking magenta, naturally, and it comes and goes in bursts of energy; Zatanna is white, effervescent, glowing in the darkness with surety and patience. Red Tornado was, at first, invisible, but sometimes M’gann notices a trace of silver, swinging from one end to the other and then vanishing, whenever they hug him.

And then there’s Conner. Her Conner, because she had given him that name, the name she trusted him with, the name that held her hopes and her imagination and her happiness, her comfort, her admiration and her pride. His presence in her mind was quiet, most of the time, but it had gone from an imminent brewing to a promise and devotion like none she had ever known and, at first, hadn’t even sensed; and it’s crimson, warm, like leaves in the autumn as they fall from a cold gray sky.   

He is always there. Little tangible pieces of him slowly carve themselves into her every thought, even when things start, irreversibly, to change.

But she doesn’t think of that very often. She thinks of all the things she wants to say to him but will never understand how to convey in something as confining as words. And sometimes when M’gann looks at herself, and Conner, and the Team, she knows that things are all right now; they will forever be all right, because she is M’gann M’orzz, and she can halt the sky if she wants to – she can silence the stars.


End file.
